Wahiawa, HI
How exposed is Wahiawa to wildfire?
Wahiawa sits at the 94th percentile nationally for wildfire risk to structures — in USFS's highest wildfire-risk band nationally — per USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities model, built from its 4,917 counted buildings, not vegetation cover alone. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
Separately from the risk score above, Wahiawa's burn probability — fire likelihood with no building count factored in — sits at the 92nd percentile nationally.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
97.6% of Wahiawa's 4,917 buildings fall in USFS's Indirect exposure zone — ember cast rather than direct flame — against 2.1% Direct and 0.3% Minimal. Vent screens and roofing material matter more here than lot clearing alone.
How Wahiawa compares
Wahiawa's 94th national percentile looks worse in isolation than its 65th ranking inside Hawaii does — this place is on the milder end for its own state, by 28 points. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Wahiawa ranks 2,044 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 3,479 by building count (1 is largest). Within Hawaii alone, it ranks 59 of 163 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for Hawaii on its state page.
Wahiawa and the insurance market
Wahiawa's 94th-percentile, very high rating is the kind of score behind a broader national pattern: insurers pulling back from the highest wildfire-risk markets, non-renewing or declining new policies outright, most visibly in California. Shopping around, not assuming automatic renewal, tends to matter here.
What would actually reduce this score
With ember exposure the dominant pattern in Wahiawa (97.6% Indirect), vent screens and roofing material tend to matter more than lot clearing alone. The home-hardening guide covers both.
More on how this number was built
Every one of the two percentiles behind Wahiawa's 2,044-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. For more on what indirect exposure implies beyond Wahiawa, see the exposure-zones guide.